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Flat modern glass office tower with "County of Santa Clara" sign.
Santa Clara County Dedicates Over $28M to Affordable Housing
RECOMMENDED
Redlining map of Oakland and Berkeley.
Rethinking Redlining

For decades we have blamed 100-year-old maps for the patterns of spatial racial inequity that persist in American cities today. An esteemed researcher says: we’ve got it all wrong.

RECOMMENDED
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A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

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The Planetizen Newswire is an email newsletter that gathers the most popular news and features from our website into a condensed, readable form in your inbox.
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AICP Continued Education
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Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs 7th Edition cover
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Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs 7th Edition cover
Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs, 7th Edition
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Shop Gifts
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youtube thumbnail with Donald Trump
Learn about the impact that Project 2025's bundle of policies could have on housing in America.
youtube thumbnail with Jane Mansfield
The death of Jayne Mansfield led to changes in the trucking industry, but underride crashes continue to kill.
Crowd walking in urban street
Challenges—like climate change and housing—require an incisive understanding of planning.
Watch more on YouTube.
Subscribe for the latest videos on planning news, education, entertainment, and more.
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Michael Lewyn

Michael Lewyn is a professor at Touro University, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, in Long Island.

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Michael Lewyn is a professor at Touro University, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center, in Long Island. His scholarship can be found at http://works.bepress.com/lewyn.

Why Kelo is not a blank check

Last week marked the third anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in <em>Kelo v. New London</em>. The first time I read <em>Kelo</em>, I thought what many Americans probably thought: that any government could seize property for any reason, so long as it compensated prior owners. <br /> <br /> But after having taught <em>Kelo</em> to law students several times over the past few years, I now realize that Kelo is much more complex. <em>Kelo</em> was a 5-4 decision, and Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a separate concurrence. Because Justice Kennedy was the “swing vote”, his decision predicts future Court decisionmaking more accurately than the Court’s primary opinion, because a taking which fails to satisfy Kennedy might not be able to get five votes in the Supreme Court.

Learning from exam schools

<p> Yesterday’s Washington Post contained <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062300297.html?hpid=news-col-blog">a list of elite public schools</a>- schools where the average student SAT is over 1300. Since suburban schools generally have better reputations than urban schools, one might expect that all the schools on the list would be in prestigious suburban school districts. But in fact, this is not the case. Three New York City schools (Stuyvestant, Hunter College, Bronx High) and one school near downtown Richmond (Maggie Walker) are on the high-SAT list- despite the fact that the New York City and Richmond school districts, like nearly all urban school districts, have mediocre reputations. </p>

Learning from my suburb

<p> <br /> For nearly all of my adult life, I have lived in small towns or urban neighborhoods. But for the past two years, I have lived in sprawl. When I moved to Jacksonville two years ago, I moved to Mandarin, a basically suburban neighborhood about nine miles from downtown. As I looked for apartments in 2006, I noticed that in many ways, Mandarin is typical sprawl: our major commercial street (San Jose Boulevard) is as many as eight lanes in some places, and even most apartments are separated from San Jose’s commerce. [See http://atlantaphotos.fotopic.net/c872477.html for my photos of Mandarin and other Jacksonville neighborhoods.] I thought Mandarin would be a typical suburb: homogenously white and upper-middle class. <br />

How to teach about sprawl

<p> Today, I turned in my grades for my seminar on &quot;Sprawl and the Law.&quot; It occurred to me that some readers of this blog might be academics, and might be interested on how one can teach a course on sprawl. </p> <p> I began by defining the issue. As I pointed out in an earlier post (at <a href="/node/31063)"><u><span style="color: #0000ff">http://www.planetizen.com/node/31063)</span></u></a> the term &quot;sprawl&quot; has two common meanings: where we grow (city or suburb) and how we grow (pedestrian-friendly or automobile-dependent). Policies that affect the first type of &quot;sprawl&quot; need not affect the second (and vice versa). </p>

The Case Against Flexibility

A few weeks ago, I was reading yet another think-tank paper arguing against new rail projects.<span> </span>Amidst the sea of technical detail, one assertion bothered me: the common claim that bus service is more “flexible” than rail.

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